


scavenger hunt

by rosegardeninwinter



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, Human/Vampire Relationship, Mild Sexual Content, Wild West Vampires, not surprised that’s not a preexisting tag XD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29448909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegardeninwinter/pseuds/rosegardeninwinter
Summary: “I thought you were all cold and still. Your kind.” She’d trembled as his hands bracketed her hips. “But you’re so … warm. So alive.”“I am alive,” she’d said laughingly. “Ain’t my fault folklorists can’t get a thing right.”Another Vamp!Lark AU, cross-posting from Tumblr
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	scavenger hunt

**Author's Note:**

> An old, never posted birthday gift for @mocalmangeal on Tumblr, based on the prompt “scavenger hunt.” Like Violent Delights, it’s a vampire AU, but it’s in the Wild West, and the roles are reversed. Enjoy this absurdity in which the titular element is in there, but barely.

The first thing she notices when she wakes is the weight. Or more precisely, the lack of weight. Her chest, where the silver binding cross has hung for the past three months, feels lighter than air. The band of faint heat she’d grown used to is gone, replaced by the gentler heat of afterglow. She stretches her toes towards the end of the bed, melting into the lumpy mattress as if it’s a silken cloud. Behind her eyelids, she can tell the desert sun is coming up, rosy pink and orange. She peeps her eyes open one at a time to admire the sunlight, pouring like good whiskey over the rim of the window and onto the floor. 

She rolls over to find her bedmate, press her nose against his golden hair. He’s made her go soft, damn him. Or maybe they’ve made each other go soft. Well, let him. After the way he’d looked at her last night, knelt in front of her in complete trust with the necklace of binding curled in his white knuckles, remorse in every word. “I should never have put this on you — never have — ” 

She’d shaken her head fervently. “What I was before … what I did to people … I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me. You did me a mercy.” 

“Morning, Sheriff,” she coos slyly, and he gives a great, heaving sigh of contentment as he stirs at the sound of her voice. “Wake up,” she urges him. “Look at the sunrise with me. You’ll love it.” 

She bites back a laugh as he sits up, bleary, with his curls rumpled and his countenance strangely innocent, more like an apple cheeked young groom than a hardened gunslinger. His hand reaches out for her and she takes it against her cheek. “Good morning, Katniss,” he says softly and her heart gives a birdlike flutter against her ribcage. 

“I thought,” he’d said last night, as he gazed up at her, bathed in moonlight, sat astride his waist and feeling every bit as commanding as on her Appaloosa, “I thought you were all cold and still. Your kind.” She’d trembled as his hands bracketed her hips. “But you’re so … warm. So alive.” 

“I am alive,” she’d said laughingly. “Ain’t my fault folklorists can’t get a thing right.” 

“Good morning,” she says, hesitating short of his name. In the daylight, she’s strangely shy. Funny, when three months ago she was cussing him out in no uncertain language from behind the bars of a jail cell. She almost can’t remember that woman. She’s kept her confidence, her fierce independent spark, but she no longer views the people of Seam as beneath her, as a meal for the taking. It’s unconscionable now. The sheriff has given her a new purpose — and he’d almost given her his life. 

“How’s your leg?” she murmurs, thinking once more of a few weeks ago, of the silver bullet grazing his thigh like a knife as he shoved her to the ground and threw himself over her to protect her from the Hunters. “I didn’t — um — strain it or anything?” 

“Not at all,” he says, showing her. “Mending nicely, thanks to your quick thinking — and your belt.” 

She shrugs at the mention of the tourniquet she fashioned to stem the blood flow coming thick and fast from the sloppy shot wound. “Baby sister was a healer.” 

“She must’ve been a good one,” he says. 

“The best.” She smiles, soft and sad. Her sister may’ve died long ago, an old, happy woman, surrounded by family, but remembering her brings an ache, however bittersweet, to Katniss’s stomach. 

He brushes his thumb beneath her eye, where the tail end of her centuries old scar tapers to a needle point. She leans into the touch. It was his touch that made her pause, the first time she met him, intending to drain him dry under false pretense of seduction. The way he slowly unbound her hair, so she could feel every strand come out of its pinned up braid like a waterfall, the way he danced his fingertips over her shoulders as he pushed aside the neck of her gown, gentle even when he’d slipped the necklace of binding around her throat. She should have known, really. But he was so … kind. No one else was ever kind. They wanted her body, and she took pleasure in discarding theirs before they got the chance. She’s not sure she could have done away with him, even then. She wouldn’t dream of it this morning. Forget her body — she’d give him her heart if he asked. 

“Oh,” he says suddenly. “I — I have something for you.” 

“What?” 

“I meant to give it to you a while ago, at Effie’s party, but then —” 

“Then the Scavengers showed up,” she says with a smirk. “Bank arsonists do tend to put a dampener on things.” 

“Ironically,” he laughs. He yawns and gets up and she bites her lip as he watches him rummage around in his wardrobe. His back is sun kissed and scarred. He’s like her — broken, but beautiful. He sits back on the bed and she leans forward with interest as he holds out a wooden box. He frowns down at it, then back up at her. 

“So,” he says. He clears his throat and gives a nervous laugh. “I bought these for my wife. My — um — ex wife. The day she ran away. I came back from the post office to find the house empty.” 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. 

“No, don’t be.” He opens the box and Katniss catches her breath at the sight of a pair of exquisite ruby earrings, long teardrops, capped at the stem with single white pearls. 

“They’re incredible.” 

“The day I met you … I wasn’t expecting you to be … well, you. I just wanted you out of my town. But you made me feel like no one had since — no. You made me feel like _no one_ ever has. You made me wish there was only ever you.” He brushes her hair back from her ear. “I didn’t know it when I bought these earrings, but, you know, in the grand scheme of things … I think I was really buying them for you.” 

“Peeta … ” she breathes. 

“May I?” 

She nods. 

His fingers are oddly deft as he fastens one jewel in her ear, then another. She glances in the mirror and delights at the way the sun catches the cut crimson gemstones. She feels decadent and adored, like a queen in her castle, and not a creature out of a ghost story. Her words of gratitude falter into a sigh when Peeta nips and then kisses under her jaw once the earrings are secure. She smiles. That’s her job. But she’ll allow it. 

“I wish there was only you too,” she tells him. She puts her arms around him and he holds her close. 

A frantic pounding at the door startles them apart and sends them flying to gather up their clothes. She makes do with her nightgown hastily tucked into submission in her overskirt, petticoats a lost cause. He fares somewhat better, and answers the door in his trousers and shirt to find — 

“Rue?” Katniss queries over Peeta’s shoulder. 

The young girl’s hair is up in a kerchief and her dark, wide eyes are bright and wild, as the hem of her calico dress whips around in the already hot wind. “Sheriff Mellark!” She points excitedly towards the horizon. “Old Man Haymitch spotted the Scavengers! They’re heading towards Hob Pass! If you hurry — !” 

“We can catch them!” Peeta gives a whoop. “At last!” 

“Yes!” Rue squeaks, clapping her hands together. “Oh they’re really in for it now, aren’t they Sheriff?” 

Peeta meets Katniss’s gaze with an expression that’s part glee, part wicked mischief, and part staggering love. He raises his eyebrow at her. “What do you say, Lady Mockingjay? They in for it now?” 

The necklace of binding is snapped into pieces and carelessly tossed on the floor. Her lover’s beautiful earrings are like shimmering blood drops against her dusky skin. Katniss grins and flicks her tongue over one sharp fang. “I’d say so, Sheriff,” she purrs. “I’d rightly say so.” 


End file.
